Page:SELECTED ESSAYS of Dr. S. S. KALBAG.pdf/130

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The technology sections of the rural society. For this, we should must also first define our target group and its capabilities be flexible and weaknesses. enough to overcome small disturbances Our target group is mainly the BPL (below poverty in the economic line) section of the society and other weaker environment. sections. The members of this group are generally illiterate or neo-literate, and are not comfortable with the printed matter. Their familiarity with numbers does not go beyond simple additions. Decimals and calculations involving direct proportions are beyond most of them. They have an aversion or fear of writing down any information or instructions. They cannot retain a chain of instructions given orally - nor are they inclined to write or read them. They generally do not understand symbolic diagrams as against actual pictures. They are poorly trained in all measurements and have only a limited access to tools of measurement. It is obvious from the above description that, printed matter cannot be the ultimate technology carrier for the BPL sections of the society - which is our target group. Even the recorded audio-visual communication meets a barrier except in the simplest of communications. Thus, the technology that produced the Green Revolution requires the farmer to use a certain rate of seeds per unit area, apply a definite proportion of fertilisers or pesticides and also make some other simple calculations for deciding on irrigation or calculating profitability. The majority of our target group cannot do any of the above operations and therefore, the Green revolution has passed them by - in spite of the loan subsidy and other government schemes. The lack of simple language and arithmetic skills in our target group leaves only the person-to-person communication as the ultimate delivery system for our target group. But if we plan to organise Rural Development Through Education System 117